Residents in the Gölçük district of Kocaeli province in Turkey awoke on March 12, 2013 to find that their 22-ton metal bridge was gone – stolen by thieves in the middle of the night. The bridge was nearly 100 feet long and weighed an estimated 22 tons. Police believe the bridge was quickly split into segments and hauled away on trucks to sell for scrap metal, which at current market prices, would have netted the thieves about $11,000. Villagers had used the bridge to access their orchards, which are located on the other side of the small tributary.

One resident, Mustafa Karakas, told a Turkish news agency that they now have to take their socks off and wade across the creek in order to tend the plantations, according to Time Magazine.

This is not the first time that an entire bridge has vanished. In May 2012, a group of thieves used a crane to dismantle a 10-ton steel pedestrian bridge and about 218 yards of railway track in the Czech Republic. The thieves duped police officers with a forged document saying they were working on a bicycle path. And in 2011 two thieves armed with a blowtorch stole a 70-year-old bridge in broad daylight about 50 miles northeast of Pittsburgh; they reportedly made $5,100 off the 15.5 tons of steel.